Google laptop, Apple problem, Beer 'Armageddon': The Street

Here are some of the stories making news in today's report from The Street, a leading financial news and information site:

Google's $199 Laptop for a Blue Christmas

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- TheStreet contributor Anton Wahlman wrote an article -- Google Ups The Ante: $199 Laptop -- on another low-priced piece of Google (GOOG) hardware before anybody else even sniffed it coming.

This comes after Wahlman's coverage of Google's $249 laptop.

Advertisement

For his work, I praise him.

Beyond that, I can't subscribe to the notion that there's anything even remotely encouraging about Google's approach.

In fact, the whole WalMartization of tech is bad for the space.

For as crazy as Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer might be, you've got to at least credit the guy for not selling out and undercutting Apple (AAPL) on price.

Wahlman gleefully lists Google's alleged bargains: A $349 smartphone that's $300 less than an iPhone; the $149 Nexus 7 tablet counters the $329 iPad mini; the 10-inch model is $100 cheaper than iPad 4; and Google's new Samsung and Acer Chromebook builds come in 60% to 80% less expensive than most new Windows 8 laptops and Apple Macbooks.

If this is what tech has come to the space is in worse shape than I thought.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The heart of the Apple (AAPL) problem was easy to reveal when visiting an investor friend of mine.

To protect his anonymity, I will give him a pseudonym. Let's call him DB.

DB is playing with his retirement, with almost $300,000 held in an IRA. He was in Apple for a while in the 1990s, but bailed before Jobs' return, and has since watched the shares run and run and run.

So, with Apple at $500, he buys 10 shares. And watches them zoom to $600. So he buys 10 more. It rises to nearly $700, then falls below $600 again. OK, he thinks, 10 more. Now he has over 6% of his entire stake in one stock, he has no capital gains left and when the shares fall again, to a little over $540, he asks, do I buy again?

Lots of investors, large and small, face the same question. With Apple's market cap still north of $500 billion, we're all in. (If your portfolio doesn't include AAPL at this point, you're practically shorting it.) But if everyone's in, where is the impetus for further gains, even though its current PE is under 12.5?

Let's start by looking at the downside. CEO Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, and he just launched a purge of his executive suite. The "new iPad" was a disappointment, losing big hunks of market share to Android-based devices. (You say "Google!" (GOOG) the way Jerry Seinfeld would say "Newman!" back in the day.)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) - Beer consumed in the United States, on average, contains approximately 5% alcohol. For instance, Budweiser(BUD) contains exactly 5%, while Bud Lite has 4.2%. Boston Beer's(SAM) offerings range from 4.05% (Sam Adams Lite) to a whopping 17.5% for its Triple Bock.

But none of the hundreds of beers currently on the market, in this country, can come anywhere close to competing with a new offering from Scotland's Brewmeister company. It calls its beer 'Armageddon'. It contains an astounding 65% alcohol. That's 130 proof.

To give you an idea of just what that means, most popular Scotch whiskeys we drink here are diluted down to somewhere between 40%-46% "bottling strength". Special "cask strength" Scotch whiskeys contain 50%-60% alcohol.